Bloodlines – Part 7 November 27, 2012

Virgil found Sophie curled up on her bed with a book. She glanced up as he shut the door behind him.

“I still can’t get through to HQ… Oh my god, what happened?” she asked, jumping to her feet.

“Time to put your game face on, babe. This just turned into an official case,” Virgil said, and eased himself gingerly onto the cot. He ached everywhere from the mauling the ghost had given him, and the scratches on his arms were throbbing.

Sophie grabbed the blanket off her bed and wrapped it around him. “I think you’re right. Something has cut me off from the ghosts here.”

“Not something. Someone. I just don’t know who yet.” He rolled his head from side to side to work out the knots in his neck and back. “I did a little poking around, to see if I could stir something up. And boy-howdy did I. Our strangler is a class four malevolent haunt, and I’m pretty damned sure it’s being controlled,” he said, giving his partner a cautious look. She looked as composed as she was going to get, considering the circumstances. “I don’t know of any good way to say this, so I’m just going to say it. Your aunt was its first victim.”

She sat down slowly, her face a mask of grief. “She was a skilled Medium, Virgil. Better than I am. How did it get to her?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it caught her nodding off, like it did with you.”

She brushed away the tears gathering in her eyes. “Who are the suspects.”

“Everyone in the house, excluding you and me. Your entire family has the gift. Although I may be able to rule out most of them.”

Sophie took a deep breath and let it out, visibly trying to push aside her grief. “Fine then, let’s work the case. If we shut down the k…killer, and the haunt goes away. Give me your impressions.”

Virgil took a moment to think back over every contact he’d had with her family—handshakes, unintentional bumping of hands or feet at the table, or, in Desi’s case, completely intentional contact. He started with the least likely candidates.

“I think we can safely count out Alex’s three thug-lings,” he said. “I give them a year before they move on from tormenting neighborhood pets to bullying their school mates, but they don’t have a scrap of brains between them; certainly not enough to control a malign spirit, even if they worked together on it.”

“Desiree wants whatever she can get away with, and she has the Talent. But both attacks were too calculated and controlled for someone with impulse issues. That, and she’s terrified of ghosts.”

Sophie nodded in agreement. “You can’t control what you fear.”

“Mmm-hmm. Alex is already redecorating the house in his mind. So much for a son’s love,” Virgil said, making a face. “But he’s a minor talent, and as subtle as a wrecking ball. Whoever is setting up all the veils around the house has skill and a light touch. Which rules out Bryant. He has some power and wants more, but he’s clumsy, a poser.”

Sophie’ eyes widened. “Linda.”

“Only one left, though I almost ruled her out,” Virgil said. “She must be good enough to veil any talent from me, and keep you from connecting with any ghosts.”

“She never moved out. That would give her close ties to the spirits here,” Sophie said. “She’s been nearby and gotten upset every time the poltergeist acted up: the lights going out in the entry hall, the china breaking. And she would have felt it when I tried to talk with my Aunt’s ghost. The attack there came almost immediately. The only one that doesn’t add up is the attack on you.”

Virgil held up the necklace, and Sophie gasped. “That’s my Aunt’s! She used it to commune with the spirits in the house.”

Virgil gave it to her. “Linda was veiling that hallway to the root cellar where I found it, so she must be afraid or ashamed of what happened there. Her mother’s ghost went straight back there. I got to feel the re-enactment of her murder first hand.”

“They said she fell down the stairs,” Sophie said, cradling the gaudy gem in her hands.

“Nope. I ended up out by the front door when I was caught in that memory loop. Honora fought it, and tried to get away,” Virgil said. He rubbed at his sopping wet hair with a corner of the blanket. “The thing I want to know is, why go after her?

Sophie wrapped her arms around herself. “Power doesn’t make sense with Linda. She already has access to all the energy in the house, and she could have simply stolen the necklace. Unless my Aunt locked her away from the ghosts for some reason?”

“Or wrote her out of the will,” Virgil pointed out. “She was pretty testy with Alex, and people have done worse to get their inheritance.”

Sophie stared at her Aunt’s necklace, which dangled from her fingers. “We’re going to have to question Linda to find out for sure. All of this is still circumstantial. There might be someone else we’re not aware of.”

Virgil doubted it, but he wasn’t going to argue with her. People weren’t always rational about family. “All we have to do is get past her killer poltergeist, top-notch veils, and anything else she can do that we don’t know about. Piece of cake.” He tossed off the blanket and dug through his suitcase for the the pistol he always kept in a hidden compartment. “I know she’s family, but we have to go in assuming she’s armed and dangerous. If you can’t stay detached enough to handle that, we’ll have to run into town to send word to HQ, and get someone else run the investigation.”

“No,” she said quickly, “I can do this.”

Virgil gave her an encouraging nod. “If we move fast we can shut her down before anyone else gets hurt. I’ll lock down her mind; you keep the haunt off my back while I question her. If we’re lucky, we’ll catch her sleeping and have our answers before she wakes up.”

Virgil tried not to get twitchy while he waited for Sophie to get dressed again, with limited success. Something about this whole situation still didn’t feel right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. That was the problem with being the canary in the coal mine; no one figures out what’s wrong till the bird keels over…